The origins of Easter

The origins of Easter 13 April 2017 Have you ever wondered why we call it "Easter"? Professor Carole Cusack, from the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, reflects on the origins of some of the more familiar elements of the Easter season. The Date of Easter While Christmas (the feast celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ) falls on 25 December every year, the date of Easter (the festival that celebrates Jesus’ resurrection), is not fixed and often falls anywhere between late March and late April. This is because the date attempts to reconcile the solar and lunar calendars. In 325 AD the first major church council, the Council of Nicaea, determined that Easter should be the Sunday that follows the first full moon, after the Spring equinox (Autumn equinox in the Southern Hemisphere). Easter Sunday is therefore celebrated by Catholic and Protestant Christians on a Sunday between 22 March and 25 April. Orthodox Churches however still use the Julian Calendar (named for Julius Caesar), which was abandoned in Western Europe after 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII instituted a new calendar to be known as the Gregorian Calendar, after himself. This was revolutionary, as it made century years only Leap Years if they were divisible by 400 (so 2000, but not 2100), and moved the date of that day from 5 October to 14 October. England did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar untill 1753 (as it distrusted anything to do with the Pope and the Catholic Church) and by that time it was 11 days behind the rest of Western Europe. Chocolate easter bunny Chocolate eggs became popular in the 19th century. Image: iStock Why is Easter Called “Easter” in English? The English word for Easter is derived from the name of a minor Anglo-Saxon goddess, Eostre, a goddess of the dawn or spring. Feasts in her honour were often celebrated in April. In German, the word for Easter is “Ostern” and is derived from the German version of Eostre, called Ostara. In both these names the linguistic element meaning ‘east’ (eost, ost) reinforces the connection with the dawn. Most other languages derive the name from Pesach, the Hebrew name for Passover. This means that in Greek, Easter is called Paskha, Italian Easter is Pasqua, Paaske is Danish Easter, and in French it is Pâques. The rise of Easter Eggs and Easter Bunnies Eggs became associated with the Paschal feast in the early Christian era, as eggs are symbols of new life. In Spring, eggs provided a symbolic analogy of Resurrection; after the chill of the winter months, nature was coming to life again. Easter bunny The rabbit became popular in the nineteenth century with the growth of the greeting card industry. In the Middle Ages, it was a special treat to eat decorated eggs after Mass on Easter Sunday, following a period of fasting through Lent. The chocolate eggs that we delight in today began to be manufactured in the nineteenth century. The first association of the rabbit with Easter is a mention of the “Easter hare” in Germany. Georg Franck von Franckenau, a Professor of Medicine at Heidelberg University described it in his book Satyrae Medicae, published in 1722. There are two reasons that hares/rabbits are associated with Easter: First, they are known to breed rapidly, again creating a connection with new life. And second, in European folklore, hares were said either to lay eggs, or to hide the coloured eggs that children hunted for in the garden. The rabbit became popular in the nineteenth century with the growth of the greeting card industry. Professor Carole Cusack from the University's Department of Studies in Religion is an expert in medieval Christianity. Have you ever wondered why we call it "Easter"? Professor Carole Cusack, from the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Sydney, reflects on the origins of some of the more familiar elements of the Easter season. While Christmas (the feast celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ) falls on 25 December every year, the date of Easter (the festival that celebrates Jesus’ resurrection), is not fixed and often falls anywhere between late March and late April. This is because the date attempts to reconcile the solar and lunar calendars. In 325 AD the first major church council, the Council of Nicaea, determined that Easter should be the Sunday that follows the first full moon, after the Spring equinox (Autumn equinox in the Southern Hemisphere). Easter Sunday is therefore celebrated by Catholic and Protestant Christians on a Sunday between 22 March and 25 April. Orthodox Churches however still use the Julian Calendar (named for Julius Caesar), which was abandoned in Western Europe after 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII instituted a new calendar to be known as the Gregorian Calendar, after himself. This was revolutionary, as it made century years only Leap Years if they were divisible by 400 (so 2000, but not 2100), and moved the date of that day from 5 October to 14 October. England did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar untill 1753 (as it distrusted anything to do with the Pope and the Catholic Church) and by that time it was 11 days behind the rest of Western Europe. Chocolate easter bunny Chocolate eggs became popular in the 19th century. Image: iStock Why is Easter Called “Easter” in English? The English word for Easter is derived from the name of a minor Anglo-Saxon goddess, Eostre, a goddess of the dawn or spring. Feasts in her honour were often celebrated in April. In German, the word for Easter is “Ostern” and is derived from the German version of Eostre, called Ostara. In both these names the linguistic element meaning ‘east’ (eost, ost) reinforces the connection with the dawn. Most other languages derive the name from Pesach, the Hebrew name for Passover. This means that in Greek, Easter is called Paskha, Italian Easter is Pasqua, Paaske is Danish Easter, and in French it is Pâques. The rise of Easter Eggs and Easter Bunnies Eggs became associated with the Paschal feast in the early Christian era, as eggs are symbols of new life. In Spring, eggs provided a symbolic analogy of Resurrection; after the chill of the winter months, nature was coming to life again. Easter bunny The rabbit became popular in the nineteenth century with the growth of the greeting card industry. In the Middle Ages, it was a special treat to eat decorated eggs after Mass on Easter Sunday, following a period of fasting through Lent. The chocolate eggs that we delight in today began to be manufactured in the nineteenth century. The first association of the rabbit with Easter is a mention of the “Easter hare” in Germany. Georg Franck von Franckenau, a Professor of Medicine at Heidelberg University described it in his book Satyrae Medicae, published in 1722. There are two reasons that hares/rabbits are associated with Easter: First, they are known to breed rapidly, again creating a connection with new life. And second, in European folklore, hares were said either to lay eggs, or to hide the coloured eggs that children hunted for in the garden. The rabbit became popular in the nineteenth century with the growth of the greeting card industry. Professor Carole Cusack from the University's Department of Studies in Religion is an expert in medieval Christianity.

Madame Eulalie: The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy

The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy Originally appeared in the Strand magazine, April 1926, and in a slightly abridged form in Liberty, April 17, 1926. beetled off See beetled out above. Ne sutor ultra whatever-it-is Ne sutor ultra crepidam: literally, “Not above the sandal, cobbler” (see World Wide Words for the phrase’s history); the same idea is expressed in the familiar phrase “the cobbler should stick to his last”—the meaning is that one should refrain from criticism outside one’s area of expertise, as Bertie implies in the rest of the paragraph. hipped Irritable, depressed, low-spirited; derived from hyp, a clipped form of hypochondria. decanted Poured out; from the verb for carefully pouring the contents of a bottle of alcoholic beverage into a serving container (decanter), as to separate a wine from the sediment that forms in the bottle. rag Informal or pejorative term for a newspaper; the original edition of the OED describes “rag” as a contemptuous term for such items as “a flag, handkerchief, theatre-curtain, newspaper, paper money, etc.” Robert L. Chapman’s American Slang (1987) gives one definition as simply “a newspaper or magazine, esp. one that the speaker does not like.” See “How Kid Brady Joined the Press” and Piccadilly Jim for other examples in Wodehouse. tabasco Hot stuff; see Carry On, Jeeves! vapid and irreflective See the notes to episode 5 of The Head of Kay’s for the literary background of this term. Hawkshaw the detective Originally a character in Tom Taylor’s 1863 play The Ticket of Leave Man; popularly produced as a Victorian melodrama. A newspaper cartoon by Gus Magor (1913–22 and 1931–52) revived the character name. Love’s Young Dream A reference to Thomas Moore’s poem of that title; “But there’s nothing half so sweet in life / As love’s young dream.” the Metropolis London. copped it Usually slang for getting caught, being punished, or even dying, so Bertie is giving us his opinion of romance in stark terms here. a year ago … thirty days without the option See “Without the Option” (1925), collected in Carry On, Jeeves!. Sippy, in other words, could not choose to pay a fine in lieu of the jail term. Boat-Race night See The Code of the Woosters. whiffled This is the earliest (published 1926 in magazines) use of the term to mean “intoxicated” cited in the OED, although since their citation is dated 1930 (from the date of the book collection) they list it after another Wodehouse usage, in “The Story of William” (1927 in both magazine and book appearances) in Meet Mr. Mulliner: Intoxicated? The word did not express it by a mile. He was oiled, boiled, fried, plastered, whiffled, sozzled, and blotto. In any event, Wodehouse seems to have been the first to use it in print, whether recording real-life slang or as a coinage of his own. sozzled Though the OED has one Victorian usage of sosselled from a 1903 slang dictionary, I suspect that Wodehouse learned this synonym for “intoxicated” from George Ade, as in “The Fable of Successful Tobias and Some of His Happy New-Years” in True Bills (1904); we know from many other quotations that Wodehouse found Ade to be a reliable source of American slang. This and the above quotation under “whiffled” seem to be his first uses; the term also shows up in Money for Nothing (1928), “Jeeves and the Kid Clementina” later in this book, and Thank You, Jeeves (1934). “What was that?” In US book only, “What was it?” off his onion Out of his mind; see Sam the Sudden. “He’s dead.” Bertie seems to be either misinformed or indulging in wishful thinking here; the Rev. Aubrey Upjohn is alive and well in How Right You Are, Jeeves/Jeeves in the Offing (1960) in which Bertie meets him for the first time as an adult, as well as “Bramley Is So Bracing” (1939) where Freddie Widgeon leaves Bingo Little’s baby in Upjohn’s study. Possibly it is Wodehouse himself feeling the relief as he wrote this story in 1926, as his own headmaster had died in 1911. See the note to the following item for more. six of the juiciest on the old spot with a cane Six strokes of the cane on the seat of the trousers. See The Mating Season annotations for further details; also compare Sam the Sudden and magazine versions of Leave It to Psmith. bit like an adder Conflating a pair of phrases from Proverbs: see Biblia Wodehousiana. posish Position, in the 1920s slang style of shortening words for informal effect. Both Wodehouse and lyricist Ira Gershwin were noted for this style. drip In the slang sense of “nonsense” the OED has citations dating from 1919, originally from the U.S. As an epithet for a fool or dull person, the earliest citation is from 1932. inferiority complex A fairly new term in popular culture at the time, based on the psychoanalytic theories of Freud and Adler; outside of professional texts the earliest OED citations in print are from the mid-1920s. ‘Don’t go down the coal-mine, daddy’ A song written by an itinerant song-sheet seller after the pit disaster in Whitehaven, Cumbria, Wales in 1910. Lawrence Wright bought the copyright for £5 and sold a million copies in three weeks. [N.T.P. Murphy, A Wodehouse Handbook] mount the deadly breach The oldest appearance of this phrase so far found is in The Missionary Gazetteer (1828, reprinted numerous times). “What is it Shakespeare calls sleep, Jeeves?” Lots of things, of course; but “Tired Nature’s sweet restorer” isn’t one of them. See The Mating Season annotations. This is a rare lapse in Jeeves’s citations. Foch Marshal Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929), French general who rose from infantryman during the Franco-Prussian War to supreme Allied commander during World War One. yestereen Yesterday evening. A deliberate archaism; the most recent OED citation for this spelling is from 1863, and in the more common spelling yestreen from 1894. US serial and book have ‘yestere’en.’ the scales will fall from his eyes See Biblia Wodehousiana. Aunt Agatha accused the maid at that French hotel … still in her drawer Recounted in the Strand magazine version (also in The World of Jeeves) of “Aunt Agatha Takes the Count” (1922). The US magazine version and its adaptation for The Inimitable Jeeves end somewhat differently. (even of an inferior school to your own) US book has (even of a school inferior to your own) here. US serial in Liberty omits the entire paragraph. Greenwich mean time Standard time for the British Isles, based on mean (average) solar transits at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, but reckoned from midnight instead of noon. spuds and cabbages Potatoes and cabbages; Covent Garden was then the site of London’s produce markets. sucked the handle of my stick A reversion to behavior that Bertie had deprecated in another; compare Motty, Lord Pershore, in “Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest”. And so the long day wore on. See The Inimitable Jeeves. as much as will cover a sixpence The proprietary laxative “Kruschen salts” advertised that the daily dose of “as much as will lie on a sixpence” would result in “good health and youthful spirits”; see Money for Nothing. “If you get an article accepted…” It has been well observed that when a writer has a story rejected he should send that story to another editor, but that when he has one accepted he should send another story to that editor. “Out of School” (1910) “I shall watch your future progress with considerable interest.” See A Damsel in Distress. like an exuberant snipe See Sam the Sudden. Carlton See A Damsel in Distress. St. Peter’s, Eaton Square See Bill the Conqueror.